Article Written by : Deka Design
Redirects strike fear into the heart of any SEO consultant. Why? Because there are so many different ways to redirect and it can go wrong easily. Also, the rules governing how the redirect works changes depending on the implementation. Here are the different types of redirects:
DNS
DNS level redirecting is done for domain level changes. CDN changes, Domain sales, transfers, DNS provider changes are a few of the possible times when you would want a DNS level change. Redirects at this level are rarely harmful.
CDN
Another option for redirects is to use a service like CloudFlare page rules. Services like this increase security and protect SEO by defining a canonical version of the domain. The service works by moving the redirects from the origin (your host) to the edge (CDN provider).
Server
Server level redirects work at the web server level. For example, most WordPress installations run on top of servers like Apache. When you change the settings in WordPress, the script changes the .htaccess file. Other examples of servers are IIS or Nginx. One of the advantages of this approach is that you can use caching.
HTTP header
There are two popular types of HTTP header based redirects. The first is the Meta refresh tag. The tag simply loads another page after a specific amount of time. The other is an HTTP response redirect with the location specified.
The problems start when several different types of redirects cover different parts of the same site. Document all redirects and avoid the problems that come when adding a redirect without taking existing ones into account.
